


Skylights

by TheLostYeti



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Angst, Dark, Demon!Stiles, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Rape/Non-con References, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-06 06:26:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLostYeti/pseuds/TheLostYeti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is a demon, same old, same old, who is running with werewolves and obstinately attracted to a he-man alpha. But as Stiles sinks deeper into this life that is not his, he faces one horrible truth.</p><p>In this ‘verse, if a demon falls in love… it dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Losing Your Memory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/541434) by [TonyStarkIsARobot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TonyStarkIsARobot/pseuds/TonyStarkIsARobot). 



> This was inspired by Hell is Other People by tsukinofaerii and Losing Your Memory by TonyStarkIsARobot. They are both incredible and I strongly recommend you go read them! 
> 
> Also, this is my first post, so please don't judge too harshly. But I would love if you would leave comments/critiques/editing advice down below.

Death isn’t so much old as ageless. At least he is for Mephistopheles. And he’s fucking terrifying. Here’s a little known secret about death:  
Fuck what everyone says about him being a separate entity. He rules angels and demons just as easily as he commands the reapers. That being said, he has been cheated before. Not for long, mind you, but it has been done.  
Mephistopheles would know. He is supposed to be dead, after all.

 

* * *

The human babe was the one who came across him, actually. Crawled up to him, the damn senseless piece of pink fat did. And then, with a giggly gurgle worthy of a lesser demon’s heart, it died. 

Stop that.

Mephistopheles hadn’t even touched the thing, on the bricks of hell he swears.  
It was there one second, that monosyllabic melody centered in its fragile chest, and then it was gone. Death was there. Humans, everywhere, running, screaming, making so much fucking noise. And then Death was gone. So Mephistopheles did what any decent demon would do presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. I mean, come on, baby! A good half-century off of hell, a feast in the forms of every soul there, and no fucking memories to manage. And Death, the old drudger, simply appeared from time to time to twitch his lipless scowl and remind Mephistopheles of the cardinal rule:

If a demon falls in love, it dies.

So Mephistopheles breathed air into the lungs of the newborn child. So Mephistopheles smiled wide at the human vermin. So Mephistopheles was named Stiles.

The first few months were closer to hell incarnate than Tom Shane from the Shane Company. It was like being trapped in a plant. All this cooing and coddling meant acting and more acting, which made Stiles a never-ending flurry of kicking arms and legs in frustration. Of course, it got easier. And Stiles even got to eat a few fools along the way. It became easier to pretend, to put up a façade, to limit his shows of strength, or to exhibit some display of incoordination.

Stiles turned five, he met Scott. First real laugh he’d managed since he threw himself into the bag of bones he possessed. Seems insignificant, but humans sometimes forget that laughter, real laughter, is pure joy bubbling up and spilling out of your soul. Laughing like that, Stiles could pretend he had a soul.

Stiles turned ten, his mom died. First real tears. Seems insignificant, but humans sometimes forget that tears, real tears, are formed through sorrow building against the shell of your skin – like the walls of a dam – and then spilling out of your soul. Crying like this, Stiles could believe he had a soul.  
And Stiles grew older.

 

* * *

The first time he had to show himself was when he was twelve. He was cornered, back up against the wall, and a strange man with too many layers of oil and sweat and stench leaned over him.

“Please don’t,” Stiles tried, rationally. “You really don’t want to do this. I really don’t want to do this.”

“Hush, my boy, it’ll all be over soon.” Hands too large crawled over his skin like albino cockroaches. Everywhere they touched, they wrecked, until Stiles knew he would be burning his clothes when he got back home. 

“I- I really don’t want to- want to-”

“Just relax!” At this command, the man’s thumb dug into Stiles’ wrist. A harsh, angry fire bloomed as skin rubbed through muscle and vein and against bone. “Go with the flow, eh boy?”

Stiles went limp. The night grew thick with the sound of panting and want. “And besides,” The man’s lips curved upwards. “At least you’ll die in the end.”

“Please, sir.” Stiles knew humans enjoyed the illusion of authority. Let him have it, let him have it if it would make him stop. “I’m begging you.”  
The breathing simply became faster, more aroused. It was all rather disgusting. And then the ape moved to undo Stiles’ jeans. 

One button. The man’s hands were shaking so badly it seemed to take hours to become undone.

Two. And now there was determination behind each desperate fondling.

Three. 

“Oh, fuck it,” Stiles sighed. Then he twisted his left hand down until it gripped the ape’s restraining appendage and pushed forwards hard and fast, using every bit of his eighty-nine pounds to wrench out the joint with a satisfying crack. The resulting scream likely woke half the town. It was pleasant, but it meant that Stiles would have to finish this job much faster.  
“You know,” An elbow to the solar plexus folded the body in half so that a solid, bald skull was in reach. Lightning quick, Stiles slammed the head down against the nearest object, a metal trash receptacle, breaking the jaw. “You could have listened to me.” The metal lid was dirty and rusted, but handy, especially when slammed at an odd angle down between the juncture where the kneecap met the shin, cracking flesh and separating muscle. “I would have let you go.”  
Stiles shook his head at the weeping imbecile. “This way, there is so much more cleaning up to do.” He paused, considering. “It’s sickening.”

“But hey,” The twelve-year-old child patted the man’s elbow. “At least you die in the end.”

 

Life was uneventful again for a while, though Stiles resolved to keep a close-shaven head to stave off any more incidents. And despite his restless state, he excelled in his classes. He lusted openly after the untouchable Lydia, who reminded him of his last lover back home, Lillith. And then, Scott had to go and get bitten by a werewolf.

It was never much of a bother, though. To be honest, Stiles was rather excited about the new turn of events. The Hales were famous, you see, for pissing off the surrounding area’s second-world species. You know, fairies, werewolves, sirens, all the like. They were a territorial lot. And Scott, oh good old Scotty, he smelled like a Hale bite all over. So when the two self-dubbed investigators came across the sole Hale survivor the following day, and Stiles blamed him for the bite, which was a logical conclusion, there was not a thought for the string of stories that this would lead to.

Like, finding out that the creepy undead Uncle Peter was actually at fault. Or that the arsonist Kate was a hunter with a touch of demon whispers staining her pretty pink cheeks. Definitely not the arrival of Erica, Boyd, Jackson, and Isaac in a family that took a little over a year to grow. Not a family that was supposed to be dead and gone long ago, leaving Stiles to a realm of his own. No, not a family that tossed five hand-made werewolves with a mad Uncle, a witch named Lydia (as undiscovered as she may be), and a huntress in disguise. Not one that Stiles would have a hand in creating, in the least.

And Alpha Derek. There’s a story Stiles would come to regret the most. 

 

It all came to head the night the pack took on a fricking Unicorn. Stop laughing. Google never mentioned Unicorn’s anti-man/anti-non-virgin angst, and two-hundred years in the deepest, darkest, ugliest hole of hell isn’t apt preparation for an over-enthusiastic purity protector, fuck you very much. 

“No, everything’s perfectly fine, dad,” Stiles shouted into the phone. “What? Pack of dogs howling? Um, yeah, Scotty just- oh shit!” With a manly falsetto scream, Stiles bolted up to the highest branches of the tree he was hiding in. 

Bam! The old oak’s arms swung backwards, and Stiles experienced the unsettling sensation of parachute-less skydiving. Humiliatingly, the only thing to be heard from the tinny speaker of Stiles’ crappy phone was a long-suffering sigh. 

“Stiles,” the Sheriff drawled. “What did you do this time?”

Snatching up the phone, Stiles squeaked, “Um, it bit me?”

As if to emphasize the irony of the moment, the cursed unicorn then stampeded forwards with its deadly, three-foot-long, venom-coated horn and of all things- bit him.

The resulting scream was not something to be proud of. Especially since it didn’t hurt, exactly. The unicorn just sort of stood behind the teen with its jagged, non-horse teeth locked into the meat of Stiles’ left shoulder. But besides the sting of lost pride and scattered nerves, nothing else happened. The whole world seemed to freeze.

“Stiles,” Scott whispered. “Open your eyes, man.”

“Oh.” Stiles opened his eyes. “Oh.” The unicorn’s horn stretched a good three feet by his cheek and stopped a solid two inches from a very shocked Derek’s face. Neither of them moved. Derek’s eyes glowed blue, his morphed features caught on an impossibly rare emotion: a fear strong enough for a demon to feast on. There was a question there, but Stiles was a little more occupied with strapping down his sudden berserker urge. 

“I’m going to try to move,” Stiles mouthed to the face across from his. Carefully, Stiles relaxed his muscles, and drew his elbow out a couple of inches. He was rewarded with a stinky snort down the front of his shirt and a tighter grip of teeth in flesh. 

Derek glowered at him, his impossible eyebrows saying, “You deserved that. Idiot.”

Stiles glared back as if to retort, “You got a better idea, princess?” Then a thought clicked into place. 

“Fuck.” A slow, hot flush swept up Stiles’ body until every inch of his skin was a messy, embarrassed red.  
He could feel it when the realization hit everyone else simultaneously. Damn her, Erica started giggling madly, tension rolling out of her. One by one, the pack joined her in laughter, more out of relief than humor, until only Derek and Stiles remained trapped in stony silence.

Of course, Derek was the last to understand. “You’re a virgin?” He asked, eyebrows high. 

Stiles withered.

Derek made an odd sound between a chuff and a snort, and then turned his full attention to the aggressive self-appointed bodyguard over Stiles' shoulder. For a while, it seemed as if the two were simply making eye contact. It occurred to Stiles, then, that the unicorn was not watching the Alpha, but assessing him. The moment there was a lull in the background cackles, the unicorn released its grip just long enough to incline its head gracefully. And then Derek spoke. Authoritatively, but with the greatest respect, as an officer might to a civilian. He said a lot of surprisingly tactful things - he was never nearly as diplomatic when communicating with Stiles, that's for sure - and implored that the unicorn would release Stiles into the company of the Hale pack, to be protected and treasured above all else. Well, not in those exact words, but the measure of respect was admirable enough that the unicorn likely considered the sentiment to be of synonymous meaning. And just like that, the Unicorn was walking away. 

First a pale figure, then a glazed mist, then nothing at all. 

And the pack was left trying to determine who was worthier of open-mouthed wonder.  
Derek chose for them. “You’re dismissed,” he grunted.

There were subtly traded looks, but in the end, the pack never said a word. Everyone just wandered off to wherever they usually go to after a training session has gone wrong. Scott escorted Allison on a painfully slow walk home, Erica and Boyd and Isaac meandered off to the Hale house, and Jackson and Lydia drove away in Jackson’s Porsche.

Stiles was left thinking, “The fuck?” And then he was driving away too. Looking back on it later, Stiles realized two things.

First of all, Derek may or may not have been declaring his love for Stiles. Unicorns are magic – yeah I know, never would have guessed – and are almost deception-proof. Was Derek speaking for the pack when he swore to “hold the human virgin above all others”, or was he speaking for himself?

Secondly, Stiles could not miss the irony in protecting the purity of a demon. There was a reason Stiles knew that unicorns, for all their magic and mystic and power, were only mostly deception-proof. See, if not for years of practicing restraint, that dumb beast might have been ripped to shreds.

 

Because despite appearances, Stiles has nothing good in him left to protect.


	2. Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles is a demon, same old, same old, who is running with werewolves and obstinately attracted to a he-man alpha. But as Stiles sinks deeper into this life that is not his, he faces one horrible truth.  
> Stiles is a demon, same old, same old, who is running with werewolves and obstinately attracted to a he-man alpha. But as Stiles sinks deeper into this life that is not his, he faces one horrible truth.  
> In this ‘verse, if a demon falls in love… it dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww!!! Thank you so much you guys! I really loved reading the comments!
> 
> Here's the second chapter... One left!
> 
> Sorry this one may be a little angsty...

When Michael and Lucifer fought, the armies they called upon were meant to be more powerful than any beings of fragile flesh and breakable bone. Purely spiritual entities borne of the strongest substance mankind can recognize – emotion. 

Lucifer thought of the idea first, and in his human worshipers he instilled a loathing so deep that the ink of their souls trickled into the gaps of their hearts, changing them. Michael thought of the idea almost as immediately, and in his human followers he spelled a devotion so complete that the ink of their souls flooded the holes of their hearts, transforming them. Creatures of rage, of passion, of fire, these things launched assault on the gates of heaven. Creatures of patience, of loyalty, of air, these things stood at the gates of heaven, and bloodshed ensued like the world had never seen.

Souls were consumed by the blaze of the war and one by one, purpose fell away. Each creature became senseless, stupid beings, entirely dependent on the emotion that made them. It made them uncontrollable, and they were locked away, to fester in the madness the generals of war had created for them. 

You called the dark ones demons. You called the light ones angels. Does it matter? They are emotion in the extreme and the epitome of sensation. Should an angel hate, it will fall to its doom. Should a demon love, it will fly to its death.

It is the mockery of balance.

 

* * *

Stiles didn’t say anything.

The answering glare was ridiculously powerful. “Shut up, Stiles,” Derek said. 

“I didn’t say anything!” Stiles protested, grabbing the long metal shaft. It protruded proudly from Derek’s left shoulder like a flag, staining the red flesh with the stench of wolfsbane and steel. But when Stiles tried a quick tug, Derek’s face scrunched up tight and a torn lip appeared from his effort to hold back. The arrow really did need to be removed. “I was just thinking-”

“Stiles. I know what you are thinking and-”

“-that it was kind of laughable that you’re going to die by the hand of one of your own pack just because you weren’t paying attention long enough to-”

“-pull out the fucking arrow before I drive my teeth into your-”

“-well, if you had just been paying attention to me, maybe you wouldn’t be here, threatening me into potentially killing you. I mean, I’m just holding your heart in my hand, basically, and I could choose to just leave you-”

“-why do I have to deal with your mouth ever single-”

“-woah. How often do you think of my mouth?” An eyebrow flew up of its own accord.

The responding face was memorable. Really. It deserved its own frame, gallery, art showing, paparazzi, and biographical movie. It was a beautiful, inspiring, undeniable expression that could be trying to say a thousand things at once. 

And it made Stiles’ stupid human heart beat a little faster.

So Stiles chose that moment to use his demon strength to pull out the arrow.

“Fuck!” Derek roared, gripping his shoulder. He glared accusingly.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome, sourwolf.” Muscle groaned as it moved to repair himself. This was always his favorite part, watching wounds heal in supernatural speed. Physical flesh was rare for demons to control on their own, and it was always irritating how fragile it all was. To have a body like Derek’s- just the thought made the mad spirit drool greedily. Skin seemed to crawl out like a bubbling hand, lapping over the wound until muscle was whole again, if slightly less tan. In no time, Derek was rolling his shoulder as if there had never been anything there.

A tendril of jealousy dimmed the hypnotizing effect. “Just a flesh wound,” Stiles muttered. It was met with a blank look.

“Really? Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Come on, dude. That’s only the greatest movie known to man. How have you not watched Monty?”

But Derek, the ungrateful ass, was already bounding away to the rest of his pack. Further out in the field the group of supernatural teens continued to play-fight each other as Peter yelled corrections from the sidelines and Allison fired shot after shot into the fray. 

“Ass,” Stiles sniffed. Then he froze. Something was wrong.

As if he had called the alarm, every member of the pack was turning towards him on high alert, bodies tense. A breeze idled along the way, uninhibited, whispering through large trees as it moved. It brought with it a fresh scent of death.  
And just like that, Stiles was surrounded. Allison at his back, Derek to the forefront, and everyone else fanned out to the sides. Peter lurked in by the shadier grove near the house, head tilted up in the semblance of a dog sniffing the air. “Trouble,” he mouthed.

Stiles couldn’t resist an incredulous look. “No shit, really?” He tried to indicate with his expression, which Peter wisely ignored.

“Not an Alpha. Something new,” Derek murmured. That was warning enough. Something new in Beacon Hills was never good, unfortunately. 

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew into the clearing so heavy and cold it knocked Allison and Stiles onto their backs. The sharp punch of the cold closed the humans’ eyes and throats with shock, and only Stiles’ demon heart kept him from blacking out. The loss of his senses did not prevent the solid awareness of a large source of heat holding him steady. 

“Derek,” Stiles gritted out through chattering teeth. “What was it?”

There was no reply. Slowly, he opened his eyes, blinking dimly into the gray that fell upon the pasture like heavy clouds from the sky. There was a grunt, and then the body next to him was staggering.

“Derek!” Senses sharpened, Stiles grabbed the nearest arm in a silent plea for his safety. His hand came away wet. Gold eyes met with red. Derek was scowling, and Stiles had to choke back a laugh because of all the times he had had to save the bastard’s life, he had never once been rewarded with a scowl so fierce.

The demon in him began to stretch and groan, reaching out towards the thing in front of it because it was so goddamn beautiful and it was beginning to bleed away. A soul. Derek’s brooding, imperfect, irreplaceable soul. The demon in Stiles wanted to lick it up like candy and then steal into the body that could be so much more. The human in him wanted to fix it, patch everything up like a ragged jacket, and make it all better. It was wrong, this human in him, because a demon possessing a human body did not actually have a soul, despite belief to the contrary, and these emotions were wrong and dooming.

His heart beat like a drum. What was this feeling? But Stiles didn’t want to know. He would focus on that later. For now, the boy was quick to rip off his shirt and then pack it onto the gaping wound in the alpha’s chest. Staunching the flow was an automatic reaction, but a part of him knew that if it really were just a flesh wound, it would have stopped bleeding by now.

Eventually, it occurred to Stiles that Derek was trying to tell him something.

“Run, you moron.”

His voice was quiet. It was unsettling. Stiles shook his head, unable to speak, unable to think, and glanced around for help. 

What he saw then almost broke him.

Bodies. Spirits leaking out like liquid, all soft golden souls and sweet, shining strength. No-one was moving. The bodies stunk of lifeblood and irreparable damage, of cooling flesh and lost lives. Scott and Allison, oh God, they were turned to each other, even in the end, with Scott just a scant inch behind her, so close they could almost touch. Scott’s mother would lose herself. He was all she had left.

And Boyd, and Erica. Confident, strong, they were fallen now. Faces white as sheet, with red roses blooming from their chests. Peter, in the shade still, as silent as a mystery. Isaac, once vivid with new life, now cold. They were all… nothing now. Stiles did not really know what to think at this point. He was unaccustomed to pouring so much energy into one area, into these beasts and beings alike, and to have it all struck from him at once was supposed to be draining. 

Stiles did not know when he began to stand, to let the alpha leaning on him collapse into a green bed. He did not know what he was feeling, exactly, but he knew that it was a hatred greater than any he had ever experienced, and hotter than the hatred that made him who he was. He also knew, locked deep inside, that this was a hatred borne from its antithesis. But he chose not to focus on that.

“Who are you?”

For a few precious seconds, the whirling gray around him was the only reply. And then, “I could ask the same of you.” The voice was cold, it was dark, it was more than little adjectives marching across a page. It was open, it was lost, it was found, it was silent, it was loud. 

It was the voice of a reaper. 

Stiles smirked. “A reaper?” He couldn’t help the mad cackle that escaped him. “Really. A rogue reaper. Well, that certainly is new.”  
The chattering crackle of dried leaves behind him made Stiles turn, legs apart, arms out in a fighter stance. “And why would you say that, young not-human?”

“Reapers are Death’s personal soldiers. They aren’t supposed to be able to go rogue. But then again,” Stiles glanced meaningfully at the corpses cooling around him. Derek’s heartbeat was all he had left, and it was slowing. Stiles pretended this wasn’t frightening him and arched his neck, seeking out the rebellious son of a bitch. “Why else would you do this?”

To his credit, the reaper did not deny the charges. He simply fluttered in an out of Stiles’ peripheral vision. “You shouldn’t be able to see me.” The thing whispered, yelled, roared, murmured. Its voice was disorienting. Stiles expected such a sound would be comforting to a human who expected freedom in death, but a demon knows better than that.

Stiles shrugged. “You shouldn’t be able to kill unchecked. Where’s your master?”

The reaper hissed. “You should not see me. You should not know of me. What version of human are you? Nothing, nothing special you are.” Its voice echoed for miles, coming from everywhere, cross and calm like a growing storm. “Nothing you have now. You are a meatsuit, a child, a being, and dead. Dead, dead like your mother. Dead, dead like your pack. Dead, dead like your-”

Derek’s heartbeat stopped. And with it, so did time slow, and so did the wisps that trembled along the edges of Stiles’ sight. And so did the control which Stiles had vested so much into.

Life stilled. The meat suit’s vision went red- literally. Demons can only see in shades of red. 

“Mephistopheles,” the reaper breathed.

The demon smiled.

“I am so sorry, Mephistopheles, I was unaware you lived in hiding- I too, try to cover my tracks-”

“Please choose one form, Reaper. You are making my head hurt.”

There was the waspish sound of flapping wings, and then a young girl appeared in solid form before him. She was too small, too pretty to be what she was, with large almond eyes and elfish features. The reaper wore a gray cotton dress and two pigtails with dainty gray bows. Her hair was almost black, her skin almost white, and her smile almost happy. 

“I apologize,” the reaper curtsied. Her voice was light in this form, but Mephistopheles was not deceived. “I was misinformed. There was not supposed to be an agent of heaven, hell, or death in this area.”

Mephistopheles strode to her, slowly, in measured steps. He had not felt this calm in years. Had hatred done this to him? He knew he was smiling now, a crisp curve of human lips pulled taut on the sweet face of a boy. “You were misinformed,” he repeated flatly.

A few scant inches away, Mephistopheles stopped. The reaper was close enough, small enough that a breath might have pushed its form over like a domino. “By who, reaper?”

“I do not know, Mephistopheles. I was given no name.” The words came out slightly garbled, caught between a sigh and a scream. It continued to echo from too many directions at once. “I will leave immediately.” The girl bowed her head.

Mephistopheles’ smile sharpened. “Not yet, reaper. You have damaged my territory. You must restore the beasts and beings in this area.”

The reaper paled. “I cannot,” she whispered. “Maintaining so much life- it will drain me!”

“Do it,” Mephistopheles said. “Or I shall be forced to help you.”

The dense gray air stiffened, and a swift wind began to pull it away. Mephistopheles stopped smiling. “You cannot run!” He spread his arms and legs wide, pushing out his demon aura until it was so barely in his body that the heart stopped beating, and then twisted every colorless particle it reached. Clouds took on the shape of arrows and earth split and crumbled in the semblance of the war between two miserable gods. A whirlwind borne of dust and air circled two bodies: an adolescent boy and a very young girl. Reality itself seemed to spin and waver as age-old demon and rogue reaper battled, on par in weakened state and determination. But Mephistopheles, as unpracticed as he was, was also fueled by a loathing so fierce it became calm, and a deeper emotion he still could not find the courage to approach, so that little by little, he drew the reaper in. 

“Reaper,” Mephistopheles sang into the air. “I give you this chance. Restore my beasts to me, and I will allow you enough of my power that you may continue to live through yours.” 

The whirlwinds increased. “You lie, demon,” the girl hissed. “I was there four-hundred years ago when you turned my brother to ash for _standing before you_. Well I stand before you now, Mephistopheles, and I am not ash yet. Have I gotten stronger, dear? Or have you become _weaker_.”  
Mephistopheles blinked. Slowly, drawing all of the girl's attention to his hand, Mephistopheles raised one finger and began twirling it counter-clockwise in the air. As he did so, the whirlwinds slowed their destructive trek and began to spin again, _backwards_. “I am stronger now than I ever was. I was there twenty-thousand years ago when you first spiraled from the cracks in the clouds and bowed your head to your former master, Death.” He shook his head sadly. Another finger in the air, and the whirlwinds began to grow, dizzying, maddening, and completely under the control of one finger. “I was humoring you, young one. But you have taken my things from me. Now I will take them back.”

And so he did.

* * *

Derek and the pack would not wake a while. Stiles had no strength left to shelter them, so for now he would simply have to stand guard and hope nothing too powerful came this way. After his grandiose show of strength, he doubted there would be any challenge too soon. Yet something, a little pitiable thought, nagged at him from the very back of his brain.  
The thought was a thorn too wretched to remove and too disarming to ignore, but Stiles could not seek it out. He had too much to lose, now. A half-dozen life-endangering stories. A family. A- 

With one hand, Stiles smoothed a hair away from Derek’s face. Warm breath ghosted over his palm. Unable to resist, Stiles tickled the stupid perfect nose it came from. Derek scowled, though he remained asleep. It made Stiles laugh, almost.

He had too much to lose, now.

* * *

The sun crossed the highest peak in the sky thrice, and then the pack blinked awake almost simultaneously, as if a spell had been removed. Allison said that she felt she had slept for a week straight. Peter shivered and glowered into the air. Derek sat up straight and alert, unconsciously searching for the brush of long fingers that had crossed his jaw and tickled his nose. 

“Took you long enough.” Gold eyes met red, and then hearts were beating faster. Stiles’ gaze flickered away. “C’mon guys! Up and at ‘em! Getting hit by a fairy’s sleeping spell is no excuse for making me do all the hard work. I expect a month of chores after this. Or at least two picks on movie night.”

There were groans and choruses of disapproval, but everyone was up and moving and everything was okay because there was no longer a nothingness surrounding Stiles that matched the nothingness inside. 

Derek stopped him. He spoke quickly and softly. “No fairy is strong enough to knock out a pack of wolves, Stiles. Especially not an alpha.”

He was right, of course, but where’s the fun in that? “Derek,” Stiles laughed. “You better be glad for fuck that it was just a fairy. For God’s sake, if it were anything stronger than that, you’d be dead! Ha!” And then he was running back to be in the midst of a pack he could call his own. 

But it was too late. Death had heard the rush of a heart that should not have been beating, and he was on his way.


	3. Until

“You were celebrating,” Derek deadpans, voice flat.

It’s not really fair to look so enticing when you’re scolding someone. It’s like a double-killer; one moment you’re shaking under the angry glares and famously furrowed eyebrows, the next you’re shaking under the growing stress of undeniable sexiness that is the man lecturing you about your safety and well-being, blah blah blah. At this point, there were really only two viable options. Firstly, you could smile nice and big and play on the feelings you know this big, bad wolf is trying to keep from you. The only way this could backfire is if you had feelings for the victim in return… Stiles decided to opt for plan B. Not because he had feelings at all! No affection for that voice, or that glare, or that look of exasperation, no siree. Stiles was just- cautious. Of course. So, plan B.

“Scott made me do it!” Stiles yelped.

A growl in the kitchen told him that Scott heard. “Oh, it’s not as if you didn’t do it too, buddy!” Stiles muttered, knowing every member of the household could hear, anyway.

Derek started massaging his temples. “Training practice,” he ordered mildly, staring at the ground. For a second Stiles thought he meant him until he heard the disgusted muttering and scraping of chairs on kitchen tiles next door. “Now,” Derek raised his voice. In an instant of clamoring, they were gone.

“Stiles,” Derek started, then stopped. He seemed at a loss for words. “You mean a lot… To the pack.” Stiles’ heart stuttered. A small part of him guffawed, while an even smaller part of him wilted. “And your safety is a top priority. For the pack.” Derek stared at the ground. “Scott told me you didn’t do anything serious, thank God. It could have been bad for my… pack. I, I don’t know what I would have done to… the pack.” Derek huffed, clearly frustrated. “No more drinking without the pack, got it?”

“I sense a recurring theme, here,” Stiles smart-mouthed automatically. Ah, there was that famous glare. Those eyes, God they were beautiful. Fuck. 

Derek rolled his eyes. “Why are you even here?”

Stiles leaned in, just slightly, just enough to allow his scent to bring a flush to Derek’s cheeks; to let the sourwolf know that he was wanting, desperately, and that this forbidden feeling inside was rising and dominating and very much alive. “I was looking for skylights.” Red eyes met gold. They were much, much too close. Stiles had been playing with Derek for over a year now, since the unicorn incident. But then what happened that last week- Stiles shuddered. It didn’t feel like playing anymore.

“What happened last weekend, Stiles?” Derek whispered.

The demon jerked back as if he had been shocked. Stiles averted his eyes, opened his mouth to make a smart comment, but Derek grabbed his wrist, stilled him. “No,” Derek said. “Tell me the truth.”

And Stiles knew this was it. This could make or break their worthless, fragile, pitiful, damning relationship, and he was dead either way. Ha. Dead. Dead like his heart, right? “I can’t,” Stiles said miserably.

But then Derek was grabbing his chin and jerking it up so that their mouths met just barely off of each other, so that someone was kissing the top lip and the other was biting the bottom. Then they broke apart to breathe, but Stiles couldn’t leave it at that, so he grabbed the sourwolf’s face with both of his hands and slotted these lips together like they were meant to be there all along. It was divine, because it was too simple, indeed. Hot, breathless, sweet, mindless, yes, yes, yes to all the clichés you can find in those weathered romance novels you have buried in your closet, because this was it. And when Derek drew away, looking startled and unsure, Stiles smiled.

“Damned glad you’re over your Kate thing,” Stiles snarked, just because he knew he could, because he knew that he was the cause of it. The reply was a soft huff and a softer kiss. Unlike romance novels, this wasn’t met with the immediate desire for long, passionate, hot sex. The lust was there, surely, and Stiles could feel it in the heat of matched gazes. Though, it wasn’t about sex. It was about-

A cold wind settled over the demon’s shoulders like a wet blanket.

-love.

The shock of it was a slow, venomous beast, trekking across Stiles’ mind maliciously and with obvious purpose. The demon, for all his senses that far exceed five, did not notice when Derek kissed his forehead and told him, with a happier expression than he’d ever seen before, that they could talk again later tonight in Stiles’ room. The demon was too busy narrowing in on the deepening of ink in the shadowy corners and realizing, terribly, that Death would be talking to him first.

* * *

Stiles shut the bedroom door.

He sensed Death before he saw him. He bore the body of a familiar figure. Death does that, sometimes, in a rather human attempt at comfort. This figure, however, was unimaginably cruel.  
“Don’t,” Stiles begged.

The Derek double inclined its head in the same way Stiles’ real Derek might have, with a curt tilt and a brush of bangs as the eyes gazed too hard. “My apologies,” it said. A slow curl of smoke sidled over its form, and the puppet dissolved glacially, as the mist ate away at faux flesh like acid. A new body appeared, one that took on the visage of Scott. It still hurt. “Is this better?”

“What are you going to do to me?” Stiles asked. 

“Kill you.”

“You will kill them, too.”

“No,” Death corrected with an easy smile, as if he really were Scott. “They have yet to play out their lives. You were not meant to be. I do not mind taking yours.”

“But you will!” Stiles yelled, hands raised defensively. Death had not even started in his direction, but somehow the demon had already begun to feel the cool breeze of a reaper’s hands stealing across his skin, leeching life from his heart. “I know you have been watching me.”

“For a seven cycles,” Death agreed helpfully.

“Okay, for a week, got it.” Stiles held his hands out in a placating gesture. “They need me, and you know it. Boyd, Erica, they both need me. Okay? After Derek changed them- they were so lost underneath all that bravado, and I gave them purpose. And Scott! Scott, he’s my best friend, okay? He’s my brother. We give each other everything, we are like two halves-”

Death smiled, suddenly. “You shouldn’t lie to me.”

“Okay, so maybe Boyd and Erica don’t need me anymore. And- and Scott has Allison now.” Stiles found his breaths shorter. “No, no! Not yet! There’s still… Lydia, and Jackson! I keep their relationship stable, I preserve them- well, perhaps they preserve each other. Isaac? Danny?” Stiles racked his brain. “Dad! Dad needs me, please Death, you must understand. He needs me and I am telling the truth wholeheartedly. Leaving would kill him!”

Death was silent. He did not smile. Scott’s face took on a somber appearance, one accompanied by unsettling patience. Stiles caught up slowly, and began to shake.

“He was supposed to die,” Stiles whispered.

Death nodded. “A legacy ago,” he said. “Heart attack. I am not a cruel being, for what you would believe, Mephistopheles.” Death sighed, and looked down at the floor, as if seeing straight through the carpet to the couch in which Stiles’ sleeping father lounged. “You kept him alive, and I scarcely mind. However, with you gone, life must assume the natural order of things.”

Stiles was at a loss. His dad, his _dad_ , God. He would suffer so much, and then his life would be extinguished.

Death inclined his head in a very Scott-like fashion. “And Derek?”

Stiles closed his eyes shut. It would kill him. Wouldn’t it? Stiles wished with every fiber of his being-

“It would kill me.”

Death blinked slowly, and turned his head to the window just as casually as if he were aware of a third presence all along. Hell, he probably had been. Stiles, on the other hand, jumped a good foot into the air and fell almost a mile onto the floor. “Goddammit, Derek! How many fucking times have I told you to use the door?”

Derek snorted and ignored him, crawling inside. His nostrils flared. “You’re not Scott,” Derek said. He walked across the room like it was his and took a deceptively unworried stance in front of Stiles. “Who are you?”

Stiles eyes widened. He predicted Death’s next move before it happened, because this was Death, and he was always the truth no matter the consequences, nor the intent. The gray sigh of smoke curled over Scott’s calves and hips, eating at skin and bone until there was nothing. And then, gradually, it coiled away, leaving a beautiful brunette in its wake.

“Laura,” Derek said.

Death laughed a ringing, loud laugh, and it filled the room the way Stiles imagined Derek recognized it best. “No,” Death replied, gaily, wiping his eyes. “Fortunately, I am much more familiar to you, Derek.”

Derek snarled at the name. “Leave him out of it,” Stiles hissed, stepping in front of Derek.

Death inclined his head. “I aim to. It is only you who must die.”

* * *

“Like fuck he must,” A voice crowed from the bedroom window. Death sent Stiles an undeserved long-suffering look, as if it were his fault that all of his friends were apparently stalking him. From the window stepped in Lydia, looking as graceful and fearless as ever. Then there was Jackson, with his usual smug face, and Boyd and Erica and Isaac, and Allison, and Scott. Protecting him? They didn’t need him. They had each other, all of them. All of them except-

“It would kill me,” Derek repeated. His voice was a low rumble. Stiles didn’t know how, but the pack was suddenly arranged how they would in training. Lydia at his side, Scott and Allison positioned on the left, Jackson and Erica right, Isaac and Boyd at the front. And Derek, not even bothering to hide the aggressiveness in his body posture, in the lead. “We will fight you to the death, whoever you are, because he is pack. It would kill all of us.”

Stiles wanted to laugh hysterically. “Derek, he is Death.” Derek sent back a roll of the eyes, and turned back to face an increasingly amused girl. Stiles saw her hand moving, ever so slightly, counter-clockwise. It was the slow gathering of grace, the whimsical show of accumulating power. Panic forced Stiles into brevity. “Derek, look at me,” he ordered, his eyes black and his aura extended. 

Derek kept his eyes focused. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“There is no later, damn you!” Stiles screamed helplessly. Several members of the pack jerked away, and he gave up pretending, because this wasn’t some little creature on the wrong side of town anymore. This was Death, and his pack, his friends, his family was not listening simply because they were too foolhardy to realize when they had lost. “Derek, I’m a demon!”

The appalled speechlessness that followed was a telling sign that everyone was listening now.

Stiles forced out a breath. Death took this moment to lean up against Stiles’ bed and examine his fingernails “The baby was stillborn,” He whispered. It occurred to him that the pack was no longer in position around him. Rather, they had backed away, giving him too much space. The only ones who hadn’t moved were Derek and Death. 

“I hadn’t meant anything by it,” Stiles promised, looking around pleadingly. “I just wanted to be left in peace. And for a while, it seemed like the right choice. Mom died-”

“Is she your mother, Stiles?” Death asked mockingly.

“And dad needed me, so I stayed. Then with Scott, and Allison, and the rest of you- you changed me.”

Scott took a step towards him, but Allison put a warning hand on his arm, and raised her bow to meet Stiles face. “Demons lie, Scott,” Allison murmured, but it hit him just as hard as if she had shouted it. He felt hatred growing in his soulless spot, stinging a little as it expanded.

“Yeah, Scott,” he spat. “Demons lie. Demons fucking lie, because that’s all we are.” The room became red, and blurry, and he didn’t know what was going on and he didn’t care. Because the betrayal was greater torture than he’d ever thought he would endure. “Try to take me now, Death, try to fucking take me now!” He was yelling. He never yelled, not like this. Not this, this senseless screaming. 

_Careful, demon._ A cold voice snickered. _You’re scaring the humans._

“I’m a liar, Death! You know it! They know it! I’M NOT WORTH LOVE, AM I? THIS IS WHAT I’M BEING PUNISHED FOR, THIS IS IT! FOR BELIEVING, HOPING I COULD BE HUMAN. HOPING I COULD BE LOVED LIKE ONE, HOPING I COULD LOVE LIKE ONE, HOPING I COULD LOVE-” But when he tried to reveal the name all he could get out were sobs. He crumpled to the ground, voice gone. Slowly, he raised his head. His pack stood motionless, staring at him, revealing nothing. Death watched, silently. 

Derek walked to him, trusting his back to his pack. They had turned so that they partly faced Death, partly Stiles, treating them both as threats. Derek knelt before the demon boy. “What is your name, demon? Why did you come here?”

Stiles, jerked at the title. Demon. It rang in his head like church bells. He felt so small then, for all his powers. But the worst part was, he still loved. So he would still die, and he would die unloved. Had Death meant for this all along? 

“You call me Stiles,” he pleaded. Derek waited, unrelenting. The demon lowered his eyes. “I am known as Mephistopheles. I came here to find something, but I was distracted along the way. I’ve lived quite happily for centuries. Rather peacefully, too. I never once ate something that didn’t deserve it.” The nervous movement in his peripheral vision told him that was the wrong choice of words. “And then I met you. And I, I-”

“Fell in love,” Death finished. He stood, swaying forward in the puppet’s willowy form, brushing past the pack of werewolves who made no move to stop him. One tanned, thin hand fell before the demon’s face. “And that means death, for a demon. Come Mephistopheles, your time is done here.” 

Stiles sobbed, eyes shut tight, and reached up to take the only kind offer he had left to receive…

…Only to be blocked by Derek, once more.

“Demon,” Derek said. And oh God, Stiles couldn’t bear that voice, that lost, empty voice. “Why did you stay here?”

The room was utterly still.

“Because I’m in love with you,” Mephistopheles whispered. 

Death shifted her weight from one hip to the other. Mephistopheles peered up from under his lashes, and red eyes met gold. 

Derek nodded. “Good enough,” And then he was picking Stiles up princess-style and edging out the door, with the pack forming a solid wall between him and Death. It became a real question of who looked more stunned- Stiles, or Death.

Allison nudged Derek. “Take him. We’ve got bag o’ bones, over here.” Derek returned a curt nod. 

At Stiles gaping look, Allison winked. “We’d never doubt you, Stiles. My boyfriend’s been suspecting something was different about you since he first recognized the sulfur in you. We just needed to be sure.”

Erica stuck her tongue out at him, and Scott grinned his doggy grin. Boyd didn’t turn around, his attention fully on Death, but Isaac threw Stiles a quick smile and nod. Jackson bared his teeth in a menacing grin that clearly read, “Idiot.”

Lydia opened the bedroom door. “Now get out of here,” she said, and she gave Derek a gentle push.

* * *

Death reared up, his feature rippling as the sweet Laura’s face became an unnatural grimace of aggression. “You cannot run from me!” He roared.  
There was a blast of light, and Isaac, Boyd, and Erica were knocked to the ground. They did not smell like death, but like sleep, although the way Death smiled warned Stiles that this was only the beginning. He raised another finger, this time pointing it at Stiles and Derek.

“Get down!” Scott ordered. The wind was knocked out of the human’s body as Derek covered him. A whoosh of angry wind flew just overhead, and when it hit the wall, turned into a jelly-like substance that coagulated and fell to the ground as a sticky pile of oozing earth and squirming worms. “That’s just nasty, man,” Stiles groaned. Derek shot him a displeased look.

Despite Allison’s best efforts, Death was knocking aside arrows like they were flies to be swatted. Scott was lying on the ground. Stiles couldn’t see the others. And Death was advancing on Derek the way a parent might approach a particularly active, disobedient child. “Hand him over, Derek,” Death said in Laura’s sweet voice. “This is not your fight.”

Then Derek did something terribly, awfully wrong. “I will not,” he said. “It will kill me.”

Death considered. “So be it,” he replied factually, lips curled up in a fake smile. He raised Laura’s right hand and began to twist a finger counterclockwise. Shadows began to swim in the air, gathering momentum.

“No!” Stiles threw Derek to the side with demon strength- and fell back, twitching, his body absorbing most of the acrid fumes. Stiles eyes rolled back, and Derek leapt forwards, pulling Stiles into his arms, but Stiles’ body was already stilling, and his vision went black.


	4. You've

_Am I dead?_

_No, Stiles, but you are… Not well._

_Ah._ Stiles felt warm. _Where are we?_

_A warehouse, I think. Death is gone, for now. The pack has been pushing him back to give us time._

_You idiot._ Stiles wanted to laugh. _Death is shadow. He is light. He may not kill me now, but it is only a matter of time. Because that’s another thing he is. Death is time, too._

* * *

Derek slammed his shoulder into the door a couple of times before he determined – rightly – that it was blocked from the outside. The building was rather small for a warehouse; and old, empty but for the dusty remains of furniture that someone had once owned but obviously forgotten in a corner. Derek walked around the building once more, examining the walls. Too sturdy to be taken down, even with his strength. Blocked door, no windows, cemented floor, and a high ceiling – Death had cornered them in this place on purpose. 

Derek was proved right when the floor started to shake ominously. 

Stiles tilted his head up. “Hah,” He choked out.

“What.”

Stiles leaned up against the gray wall. His eyes were entirely black, and from the way he stared past Derek’s ear, sightless as well. His skin was ashen and his heartbeat was slow and soft. Derek hated himself, suddenly, for being unable to say the right things at a time like this. “Light,” the boy croaked and shrugged his shoulders as if noticing Derek’s sudden hard look. “I’m a demon, darling. We’re sensitive to light no matter our, um, condition.” 

Light? Light! Derek looked upwards towards the ceiling. A simple rectangular skylight, gray with age and negligence, allowed a glimpse to clear skies as wide and blue as the world outside.  
Without another word, Derek shifted, his bones cracking and splitting. Wearing the face of a monster, Derek crouched low to the ground – then threw himself upwards as high as he could. His fingers brushed the air below the window, but did not touch the fragile glass. The floors groaned.

“Can you reach it?” Stiles brows furrowed.  
The werewolf flinched, unable to say a word, and looked around the warehouse desperately. A high stool with four slightly uneven legs was spotted in the corner, and Derek grabbed it greedily. Crouching down low on the unstable stool, Derek pushed himself off into the air as high as he could. Yes! His fingertips grazed on the window’s lock, nudging it open. But as he dropped back to the ground, the stool splintered under the sudden weight, and Derek was sent sprawling with a muffled cry. 

“What’s going on? Derek, are you hurt?”

With a sharp crack of bone, his ankle began sliding back into place, but it was healing too slowly for the splitting earth beneath the building. Wincing, Derek forced himself to stand, to face the damned wooden mess before him, and to drag the next best thing – a dresser table – beneath the pale light. Then he was repeating himself. Crouch, launch, nudge, and fall. The dresser table broke, and so did his ankle, again. The pain was more demanding this time, and Derek could not withhold a small groan.

But the window was not open, so Derek pulled himself to his feet and began again.

“How about I tell you about my skylights,” Stiles whispered, after a moment. Stiles licked his lips almost audibly. “They were the worst and best thing about Hell, you know. And Hell sucked pretty bad.

Lucifer wasn’t actually interested in time dimensions for his mad little demon friends, especially since we failed him in action and everything. So he just threw us into this hole in the ground and covered it and left us there. We were all already mad. We just killed each other. Ripped into each other like the savages war had turned us into. But then, then some idiot knocked off the lid to our little prison.  
The hole was deep enough and we were all too stupid to think of using each other to get out. But without a cover, this one, itty bitty touch of light dove down just far enough that one of us could drink it in at a time. And it was incredible. It gave you hope and it showed you shame, and by God, Derek, it made me a fucking human.  
No duh, we fought over it. A lot more of us died.  
Eventually, the survivors smartened up. Some of us made it out – just followed the light, climbing on top of each other until we reached the top.  
When I got out of that hole I just found myself on a slightly higher, slightly less sinister level of hell. Beat up a few punks, made my name, and moved a tad higher. Inch by bloody inch, I crawled my way out of there, and the whole time I just couldn’t forget that fucking light.”

Derek wasn’t sure how many times he had jumped for that window. Several thin fissures divided the light in the glass but it had yet to shatter completely, and Derek had a thrice broken ankle and twice cracked rib to show for it. 

Even then, Stiles’ voice reached him. “Fucking thing. It was hope that screamed at you, you know. It just- _fuck_. It reached into your guts and pulled them out, sewed you inside out, fucking, fucking bright. And I just had to keep climbing and clawing the madness out of my eyes so that for just a little bit longer, I could keep my worthless gaze on that glow.  
Then one day, one day.  
Oh, Derek, I reached the skies. The sun was everything I could possibly dream of. I told every soul that would listen that I had made it to heaven, and that all my hard work had paid off. A tree spirit told me I still had quite a few levels to climb to reach there, and that this was Earth. Good enough for me, I said. I would take this bloody Earth over heaven any day. It was just over a decade before I figured out I was still searching for the light, because the sun didn’t cut it. So I began looking for a way to climb up, again.”

Pieces of the floorboards were crumbling away freely now. Stiles couldn’t feel it. All of a sudden, there was a crack, and then the ground was falling away beneath him. Tumbling forwards, Derek grabbed the broken boy and pulled him away from the hole, towards the center of the wide room. The floor was falling. There wasn’t any time left. There was barely enough support keeping the building up as it was. Derek clutched Stiles tight to his chest, adrenaline spiking, and he glanced at the cluttered mess once again. The one object that remained sturdy enough was an lumpy, antiquated bed complete with mattress and bear-footed wooden frame. Setting Stiles gently on the ground, he stumbled back to it. Every limb in his body screamed for rest, for time to heal, and the thunderous sound of collapsing support beams weren’t any help.

Derek settled the mattress on its frame at last. _Stiles_ , he thought. Splaying his fingers wide and stretching his working arm, Derek hit the window.  
With a violent cry, the glass burst apart and rained down on them both, leaving room for Derek’s fingers to grip the sides. Delighted, Derek grappled at the ledge, but his fingers were slipping on his blood and the bloody shards and the rust that had accumulated on the window frame, and he fell through the bed and mattress, snapping it to the ground. With a strangled whimper, Derek realized that there was nothing left to climb on, and there was no way Derek could reach that window otherwise.

“Derek?”

Helplessly, Derek grabbed Stiles to pull him up onto the collapsed mattress.  
Stiles seemed surprised, at first, but he was smart. Always so smart. He figured it out fast, and his expression relaxed in acceptance. He leaned back in Derek’s hold as if they were cuddling and not waiting for the ground to swallow them whole. Derek couldn’t get over how small he was. This was a monster? Derek wanted to laugh. He was barely a child.

“Did you ever reach it, Stiles? Ever reach heaven?”

“I never got to heaven, Derek. Demon, remember?”

“Stiles, not now. I just need to know-”

“Derek.” Stiles grabbed his chin a pulled it down towards him in a deep kiss. It tasted like tears, and pain, and shame. But for the love of God, if he was listening, this kiss would not taste like regret. Stiles shook his head. “The light, it wasn’t heaven. It was you.”

“Lucifer wasn’t interested in time for us demons in the hole in the ground, so everything in that little prison was its own isolated island of not-quite-existence. When some moron knocked the cap off our insane asylum, enough time edged in that we could see through no-time into reality.  
It really gets complicated, dealing with a fourth dimension. But you see, one measly ball of fire is not enough to reach a demon in through the fourth dimension, not to mention a prison hole full of them. So when each demon got a glimpse up through that fourth wall, we would actually see the soul of the one who shone brightest for us.  
And I saw you.  
You were enough to drive me up out of that whole and back on Earth. You gave me life, Derek. You are my skylight.” Stiles laughed, “You idiot.” 

And then Derek was kissing Stiles, and Stiles was kissing back, and the agony for them both was horrible but the world was wonderful and Stiles was a demon who was in love and that was okay. It was okay. “I love you,” Derek said.

Stiles smiled like his heart was breaking. “I know.”

Then he grabbed Derek by the hips and twisted him up above him in one smooth move. Crouching low, Stiles pushed off of the bloody mattress and launched into the air with his broken, worthless body. Oh, God. He was flying then. High enough and far enough with this hateful demon blood that had kept him alive long enough to do this. Gravity hit them hard, as did the glass and the useless roof which fractured around them, and then the skin was scraped off of their bones and their limbs were twisted into useless angles as they were propelled off of the ledge and to the ground. All of a sudden, Derek was rolling, and rolling, and for the life of him he couldn’t find the strength or balance to stop, but all the while he pleaded with the world, “Stiles!”  
When the world stopped spinning he was maybe eight good feet away from the only one who mattered, but they were safe.

Then there was a groan. A creak. An angry wind. A vengeful reaper.

Derek knew before it began, what was happening. He was crawling forward with one good arm, Stiles’ name on his lips, forced to watch in horror as purple shades swam across walls of the warehouse and the building popped, like a bottle cap forced off under too much pressure, so that the explosion could shake the ground and bring down a building for the ravenous earth to feast upon.

Stiles could not see, but he raised his head until red eyes met black, and he smiled anyway.

Death is not a separate entity. He is not good. He is not bad. He is a rule-keeper for the strictest, cruelest of rules. The rule is: An angel cannot hate lest it fall to its death.  
A demon cannot love lest it fly to its doom.

 

Derek couldn’t believe it, even as the dust cleared. So, Death had won after all. His pack rushed past him to the rubble, but their voices were all a dull roar. A pale, empty body was carried from the rubble. That wasn’t Stiles.

Stiles was the sun, he was Mephistopheles, he was a damned fool who surrendered his life to the inevitable. He was a monster with an IQ rival to Warren Buffet and a smart mouth that tasted like candy. He was a thousand years old and an eighteen-year-old. This shell in front of Derek was not Stiles.

Far away, there were sirens.

“You son of a bitch,” Derek whispered. “You’ve fucking killed me. You’ve killed me, you cold-hearted worthless _bastard_. I’m your skylight? I am? You _taught me what light is_ , and _I’m_ your skylight?” Dimly, it occurred to Derek that he was yelling at a cadaver, but it was still warm and its lips were still softly parted as if asleep. “I hate you,” Derek decided. “I do.” But he was blinded by a gray wash of pain, and he had to lean down to whisper the truth into the ear of a dead boy, before the lie could stain him red.

* * *

A couple miles away, a little girl lost her hat to a brisk wind that swept it away, to the North, and no one noticed until she tripped in her chase of it, and the scratched knee made her cry.

In the next state over, an older couple shared a pleasant dinner with their adult son and his wife, and no one noticed that the wife rubbed her belly with a smile when she spoke.

Above Derek’s head, a blue jay sang for a mate to come to him, and no one noticed when it settled on the shattered remains of a roof caved in, its little feet clutching the rusted frame of a broken skylight.


	5. Loved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh you guys!!! Thank you SO much for all of the comments and love! I really am sorry about the lag in time; I'm not very good at managing my time during finals week, apparently, haha. Love you all so very, very much and happy, happy summer!
> 
> UPDATE: By the way, and I know this is going to sound pathetic... I just found the inbox. It only took me what, three months? Haha...Ha... I honestly couldn't figure out how to reply to you guys through the comments, guys. I was struggling. But thanks for sticking with me anyway, you guys are AWESOME!
> 
> P.S. It took me six months to figure out how to enable the Ask box feature for tumblr, so this was actually rather quick for me. ;)

**Four Years Later**

The woman dipped her head to the chair before her in a cool invitation to sit. “Call me Samantha. It is what I go by, here.”

“I thought demons could only possess humans.”

Samantha smiled, and her sharp teeth grazed a blue upper lip. A dainty elven ear twitched.

“You thought wrong,” she replied simply. “I haven’t much time.” _Speak quickly, before too much attention is drawn to us._

“It was extremely difficult to find you, Samantha. Many people died.” _You are safe, for now._

“They did.” _Not the point._

Derek dropped the pleasantries. Even now, after all this time, he could hear Stiles in his head like a conscience. _Business is all about appearance, sourwolf; you’ve got to learn how to smile. What would you do without me?_

“I knew another one of you.”

Samantha sat back in her seat, her hands folded in front of her. She allowed her expression to soften. “Ah, Mephistopheles. He was the first one to make it out, you see, and he was more powerful than most of us combined.” She paused, fingers curled over her chin in the portrayal of a human in thought. “Knew he would die first, I did, from an obsession so powerful? A real shame, that. A waste.”

Derek remained stoic, but his hands gripped the arms of his seat just tightly enough to warp the weary metal. “Can you come back?”

Samantha froze. Her distant look vanished, and then she was leaning forward with her whole body, a vicious, manic grin on her face. “Come back from what?” She enunciated carefully.

Derek did not reply.

Samantha hissed out a laugh. “No, dear boy. We cannot. When _love_ ,” she spit the word out as if it stung. “Clouds our vision, it is near impossible for us to hold onto life, you see? It is not a spell you can cast and reverse, just like that. It is a paper that you burn so that no matter of water can make it paper again, and all that it will do is douse the fire.”

Samantha walked around the desk and leaned into Derek’s ear. “We. Will never. Come. Back. You have been chasing a memory for God knows how long and it is time for you to get it in that thick werewolf skull. Give up now. Find someone new. Preferably someone who won’t end up dying because of you. ” With a jerk, Derek shoved his chair back and stood. The two gazed loathingly at each other until Derek turned on his heel and made it to the door, dropping two broken chair arms on the floor with a clatter. Just before he left the room, he paused. 

Derek spoke to the door. He could not face Samantha, not her knowing look, not her cruel smile. “Where do you go, when you die?”

Samantha cocked her head in surprise. “Why do you ask?”

“To Hell?”

“We need a soul to get into hell, wolf.”

“Good,” Derek said. “That’s good.”

He yanked the door open and strode out. Scott and Erica, waiting just outside the office, leapt up onto their feet with matching expressions of determination. “Wait,” cried Samantha in exasperation. “What are you doing?”

Samantha groaned. “He isn’t in Hell, you dumb ass! For fuck’s sake, why can’t you let this go?”

Derek was tired of listening to her rave. He knew where he needed to go. Say what you want about demons, _Stiles_ had a soul. Of that, he had no doubt. Erica turned back around and answered for him, keeping her backwards stride in time with her Alpha. “He loves the little shit, that’s why. And we miss his cooking.” Her grin was wide and sharp. “Besides, the fun is in the chase.”

There was a pointed growl, but the pack wasn’t done just yet. Scott didn’t turn around, thank God because he was _much_ too uncoordinated to attempt that, though he spoke loud enough for Samantha to hear. “Derek has tried to sell his soul at least twice to get in touch with Stiles, but no demon would come near him. Apparently, whatever Stiles did was enough to protect the entire Beacon Hills from even Hell itself.” Scott’s voice became quieter, and Derek suddenly couldn’t tell if he was talking to Samantha or himself. “We’re supposed to move on. We are. Stiles’ dad couldn’t, and he died.” 

Derek bent his head. He didn’t want to hear this, not again. But what Scott said next was unexpected. “It’s a good thing we’re too damn stubborn.”

Derek looked up in surprise. For the first time in three years, a slow, completely real smile stretched across his face. Erica burst into a peal of wicked laughter, and the three of them walked away from that room, out of that building, and onwards once more.

* * *

Just overhead, a blue jay circled lazily, singing into the sun. Almost casually, it dipped low, paused, and then, ever so graciously, shit on that Chevrolet Camaro parked in front of the ugly gray building. Politely, it flapped off to the nearest tree to enjoy the exasperated groan of a coming alpha. 

“Fucking birds,” the bitter-looking one scowled at the white splotch on his otherwise spotless front windshield. 

“I dunno, Derek,” the mischievous female beside him smirked, a sharp twist of her red, red lips. “Stiles always used to say that it was good luck.”

The last one smelled like apples and love. “Sounds like him,” the boy said, stepping into the backseat. An obnoxious Darth Vader theme song started playing somewhere in the front seat, and the bitter one – Derek – seemed to soften as he dug in his pocket for the phone. 

_Death isn’t so much old as ageless. At least he is for Mephistopheles. And he’s fucking terrifying._

“Stop!” The faint noise grew louder as it approached at an alarming rate. “ _Arrêt_ , you idiot werewolves!”

The grumbling vehicle did not quiet, but it didn’t move. Derek peered viciously past the female’s head. “Samantha, we are done here.”

And then another non-human was in front of the car, her little hands pressed against the hood. She looked frustrated, her blue hair flying in wild strands around her head. “I’m doing this for your sake, you ungrateful demon-killer,” she snarled. “But I’ll be quick about this since you’re so eager to go.”

“Then be quick about it,” the female one showed her teeth. The theme song began again.

_See here’s a little known secret about death:  
Fuck what everyone says about him being a separate entity. He rules angels and demons just as easily as he commands the reapers. _

Samantha blinked in apparent irritation. “I never lied to you… But I may not have been completely straightforward-”

“No surprise there,” someone muttered. 

The elf continued, if a little more loudly. “-when I said that demons need a soul to get into hell. The truth is: living up here on earth, most of us can grow one. This includes me, unfortunately.” Her face screwed up in a grimace. “But if a demon with a soul was launched back into Hell by Death, I would have known. That’s not the sort of thing you keep quiet, if you know what I mean.”

The ring tone started again, and Derek tossed it in the back seat for the apple-smelling one to answer. “What are you saying?” He growled.

“I’m saying, either Mephistopheles never loved you enough to grow a soul and get into hell-” Derek snorted. “Or,” Samantha gave a sharp look. “He never died.”

The engine’s purring stopped, and the resulting silence was loud. 

“Derek,” the apple-smelling boy whispered. His face was pale, and his hands shook. He held up a black cell with fine white text. “It’s from Lydia.” 

Ever characteristic of the recently-discovered witch, the white text was brief and cryptic:  


`“Idea – Stiles’ last defense: escape. Method – spirit transfer. Possibility:  
What flies?”`

A blue jay chirped mockingly from the driver’s side. At the group’s sudden stares, it ducked its head into its wing, cleaning it freely. Derek was the one to say it. “Stiles?”

To his utter disappointment, it merely lifted off, catching the breeze easily. But then, it circled back, rather leisurely, and dipped barely low enough to-

-shit on that sourwolf’s head. 

No one moved. 

With a high, happy song, the blue jay circled overhead once more before it at last flew back up into the sun, away from the revving of an engine and the gaily, excited cries behind him.

_That being said, he has been cheated before. Not for long, mind you, but it has been done._  
 _Mephistopheles would know._  
 _He is supposed to be dead, after all._

“Stiles,” Derek murmured. And he couldn’t be sure beneath the glow of a bright sky, but it looked kind of like…

…the blue jay winked.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Hell is Other People by tsukinofaerii and Losing Your Memory by TonyStarkIsARobot. They are both incredible and I strongly recommend you go read them!


End file.
